It's December 2009 and we are heading surely but steadily towards Christmas, the start of a new year and, for me, the start of a new adventure. On January 10th 2010, I head for Vietnam to live and work in the capital city of Hanoi certainly for one year, maybe longer.
Why Hanoi? Well, I am going to work for VSO in Hanoi (Voluntary Services Overseas) as a Disability Awareness Advisor. I will be working for two companies. I will spend some of my time in the VSO office and the rest of my time with an organisation called IDEA who support the development of services for people with disabilities. So, a new job in unfamiliar country (never been to Vietnam) doing a new job working with two different briefs for two different companies. Yikes!!
Not as though this sort of crazy, jump in at the deep end type of adventure is new to me. Back in 2005, I did a similar thing when I went to live in Florida to start my own business and a new life. That turned out to be an increadibly exciting (LOVED living in Florida), out of the stratesphere stressful and ultimately, excrutiatingly expensive adventure. US Immigration, horrendous bad luck, some bad decisions all topped off with a slice of the 2009 recession conspired to my losing the everything.
So what do you do when you have nothing and are back where you started? Well, I licked my wounds for a few months and then started to look at my live long wish list. One thing stood out for me that I put on the list in my early twenties and had never done......VSO. So I applied got accepted and here I am on the edge of making the next step into the unkown.
Why so driven?
In all truth I don't really know. I could settle down and get a job and probably be OK with my life. There are sacifices to be made for the life style that I have created for myself, of that, there is no doubt.
I think the drive for me comes from two angles. The first being that once bitten by the adventure of life, it IS a challenge to settle back to more 'normal' activities. The othe angle is my age. I am 59 and want to live life to the max. Life is such a gift to embrace and always wanted to do just that to the degree that I am able. I have missed opportunities in my life...who hasn't.....and I want to minimise that possibility as much as I can from here in.
There is one other factor that I would like to add into the mix and for some this will be a little off the wall so take it or leave it as you choose.
We are heading towards a major time in the calendar of this planet. The Mayan calendar does not stretch beyond 2012. Now this could mean that they just couldn't be bothered to write any more predictions, they lost interest of it coicided with the demise of their culture. Whatever the reason, the prediction suggests possibilties that some intepret as being the end of the world while others suggest that it is the end of the world as we know it. Enegies are shifting, changing, speeding up. Those who are responsive to 'energies' (and NO, I cannot explain what I mean...you know or you don't) experience life as being different to how it was a few years ago. There is a shift that feels like we are heading for something different developing for the planet. Some see it as doom and gloom, I see is as being different. And I want to follow any opportunities that arrive for me and just will not go away in order to be best placed for being and doing what I can to contribute to whatever happens.
So, there you are. Rubbish? Poppycock?.....possibly but all I know is that I am following my heart and there can't be too much amiss with that can there!?
See you soon
Pat
